On 12/12/13 04:29, ... wrote: > Antoine, > > Great information. Thank you! > > So, VirtualGL would theoretically work for multiple users per card > (multiple applications on multiple displays)? Yes. > My intention is to be serving modern video games, like Minecraft, League of > Legends, etc. I guess I would have to look into if openGL acceleration is > all that is needed. OpenGL is enough for games on Linux. The next problems you are likely to hit are: * screen resizing: games usually resize the screen to a lower resolution to be able to sustain a decent framerate. At present xpra makes the Xvfb server match the client's resolution - which is not what you want. You want the whole display as a window. You could run Xephyr or Xnest as an xpra child, and run the game from within that nested X11 server. Worth a try. Another way would be to modify xpra to add the ability to export the whole display as a window - not sure it would make much difference. * keyboard and mouse synchronization: http://xpra.org/trac/ticket/137 " games rely on precise mouse movements and their timing" Summary: network latency and mouse movements/acceleration are unlikely to get on well...
Antoine > I look forward to trying out the virtualGL with my simple setup, and > working towards getting having a need for NVENC. > > -Elliot > > > > > On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Antoine Martin <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On 11/12/13 06:18, ... wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> I had some questions about NVENC. Sorry if this information is somewhere >>> already and I didn't find it. >> I assume you've already read: >> http://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Encodings/nvenc >>> Can xpra use a kepler enabled nvidia card to both render graphics >> (hardware >>> accelerated) and h264 encode them before shipping them off to another >>> display across the network? >> According to Nvidia: >> >> https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/cuda/files/CUDADownloads/NVENC_AppNote.pdf >> "NVIDIA's latest generation of GPUs based on the Kepler architecture, >> contain a >> hardware-based H.264 video encoder (henceforth referred to as NVENC). " >> So, assuming that this is a pro card or that you found a license key >> (...), yes you can use NVENC with such cards. >> This answers the second half your question. >> >> >> As for the "render graphics hardware accelerated", it is a little bit >> more complicated. Based on your description, I assume that the card is >> not connected to a monitor or that this monitor will not be used for >> viewing. If that's not the case, the answers below are going to be >> inadequate. >> >> First, you need to define "accelerated": >> * if you mean OpenGL acceleration - which is often enough, then this >> will do what you want and is supported: >> http://www.virtualgl.org/ >> * if you want to use the regular "nvidia" X11 driver for acceleration >> directly, there are ways to use a regular X11 server (usually running as >> root) to replace xpra's Xvfb, you may need to use the " >> ConnectedMonitor" option if no monitor is attached to the card. This >> will only work for a single user per card and your mileage may vary: it >> "should" work. >> Using "xpra shadow" to copy an existing display is not a good solution >> at present as it uses polling and will use far too much CPU time - >> though that could be fixed. >> >> The main downside of the current xpra 0.11 code is that it is not really >> tailored for this Nvidia specific use-case: during screen updates the >> pixel data will be downloaded from the GPU to the CPU and then uploaded >> again to the GPU for compression... which is a complete waste of >> valuable memory bandwidth. It shouldn't be too hard to bypass this >> unnecessary copying, and if there is enough demand for it then we can >> certainly look at it. >>> If not, is this something that some other VNC like program can do? >> Not as far as I know: xpra is the first, and at present the only >> open-source software to have NVENC support. >>> If so, >>> are there any other hardware requirements or issues that I should know >>> about? Would any kepler/NVENC enabled nvidia card be able to do this? >> As per above, with consumer cards (GeForce) you will need to find a >> license key... >> >> I do wonder if some consumer protection law could force Nvidia to >> provide the keys required to take advantage of the features they >> advertised when the cards were sold (and earlier SDKs did not require >> license keys either). >> As can be seen here in the GTX680 whitepaper: >> >> http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/en_US/pdf/GeForce-GTX-680-Whitepaper-FINAL.pdf >> "All Kepler GPUs also incorporate a new hardware-based H.264 video >> encoder, NVENC. " >>> Does anyone have any experience with this? >> Cheers >> Antoine >> _______________________________________________ >> shifter-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.devloop.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/shifter-users >> > _______________________________________________ > shifter-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.devloop.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/shifter-users _______________________________________________ shifter-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.devloop.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/shifter-users
